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http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=AAA3157B-1C7D-40DC-B9F6-1A9427BE8E42

Britain's War on Pigs
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, October 06, 2005



Pigs are disappearing all over England, but not because of some porcine variant of Mad Cow Disease: rather, the most implacable foe of the swine is turning out to be multiculturalism.

The latest assault came in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, where employees were told that they were no longer allowed to have any representations of pigs at their desks. Some had little porcine porcelain figurines. Others had toys or calendars of cute little pigs. One had a tissue box depicting Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. All of this had to go, not because of new some new anti-kitsch ordinance, but because Muslims might be offended — particularly now, what with Ramadan beginning. How could a pious Muslim in the Dudley Council, West Midlands benefits department redouble his efforts to conform his life to the will of Allah with all these…pigs staring him in the face? It was an insult!

This was not the first anti-pig initiative in Britain. In Derby, Muslims took offense at plans to restore the statue of the Florentine Boar, which had stood in the Derby Park for over a hundred years before it was decapitated by a German bomb in 1942. Recent plans to rebuild the Boar’s head ran into resistance from local Muslims. Suman Gupta, a local Council member, warned: “If the statue of the boar is put back at the Arboretum I have been told that it will not be there the next day, or at least it won’t be in the same condition the next day at least. We should not have the boar because it is offensive to some of the groups in the immediate area.” However, after more than 2,000 locals signed petitions in favor of the Boar, local authorities decided to bend to public opinion and go ahead with their original plans to restore the statue.

 

Elsewhere in England pigs did not fare so well. In March 2003, Barbara Harris, head teacher at Park Road Junior Infant and Nursery School in Batley, West Yorkshire, banned stories mentioning pigs. “Recently,” Harris explained, “I have been aware of an occasion where young Muslim children in class were read stories about pigs. We try to be sensitive to the fact that for Muslims talk of pigs is offensive.” Harris didn’t mention whether or not she intended to allow Muslim students to possess copies of the Qur’an at the school, despite its repeated mention of how Allah cursed Jews and turned them into apes and pigs (2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166).

 

Why have pigs become so unpopular in Britain? Mahbubur Rahman, a Muslim Councillor in West Midlands, summed it up in explaining why the toy pigs had to go: “It’s a tolerance,” he said, “of people’s beliefs.”

 

How’s that again? It’s “a tolerance of people’s beliefs” to deny to others the right to display harmless pictures and figurines? Mahbubur Rahman seems unacquainted with the dictum, widely attributed to Voltaire, that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Yet this is what tolerance really is: the acceptance of the fact that in a free society, some will do and say things of which one may disapprove, and that one has no consequent right to command or force them to stop. If this is not recognized in any given society, that society is not in fact free at all — any more than Henry Ford’s offer that “You can have a car in any color you want, as long as it’s black” represented a genuine choice.

 

For Rahman instead to equate a British capitulation to Muslim sensibilities with tolerance indicates that he has confused Islamic supremacism with tolerance. This is perhaps not surprising given the near-universal tendency among Muslims and non-Muslims alike to laud Medieval Muslim Spain as a proto-multiculturalist paradise of tolerance, when actually it was a paradise for Islamic supremacists. Christians and Jews lived in harmony with Muslims only as inferiors. Historian Kenneth Baxter Wolf notes that the after the Muslim conquest, the conquerors imposed new laws “aimed at limiting those aspects of the Christian cult which seemed to compromise the dominant position of Islam.” After enumerating a standard list of the laws restricting non-Muslims (dhimmis) — no building of new churches, no holding authority over Muslims, distinctive clothing, etc. — he adds: “Aside from such cultic restrictions most of the laws were simply designed to underscore the position of the dimmîs as second-class citizens.”

 

Multiculturalism? Tolerance? Not by any modern standard. And neither are the disappearing pigs of Great Britain.

[SandalJepit]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5849339.html



Kite lovers flying against religious winds in Pakistan
Critics say the sport is unsafe and has no place in an Islamic republic
By JAMES PALMER
Newhouse News Service

LAHORE, PAKISTAN — Iqbal Aslam and four buddies meandered through the narrow alleyways.
Centuries-old brick houses and apartment buildings loomed over them, shrouding the streets in a surreal dusk.

Upon reaching their destination, they knocked on the white metal door of a five-story brick edifice. A man opened it, Aslam's group nodded at him and then set off to climb a winding cement staircase to the roof that overlooks a city of nearly 10 million people.

Then, Aslam did something completely illegal here: He pulled out a kite and cast it skyward.

As Pakistan, the sixth-largest nation in the world, struggles to implement democratic reforms, the kite flying ban is another intriguing battle between social moderates and religious conservatives over the place of Islam within society.

On one side are those who contend kite flying has no link to Muslim customs, and therefore has no place in the Islamic republic, where 97 percent of the country's 165 million people are Muslims.

On the other are those clinging to the tradition of a popular sport.

And caught in the middle are the people who make and fly kites.

"Part of our life and history is fading away," said Shahid Malik, a 49-year-old kite flier.

Kite-flying ban unpopular
In 2005, Pakistan's supreme court banned kite flying across the country. The lawyers who presented the case for the prohibition cited three key reasons in their argument:

• Banned metal string from stray kites was fatally cutting the throats of motorcyclists and bicyclists.
• Children were being injured or killed chasing fallen kites.
• People retrieving fallen kites from cables with metal wires were being electrocuted and causing millions of dollars of damage to the country's power authority.
Those reasons aside, the ban is not popular with many — especially those who argue their leaders have surrendered to the influence of religious conservatives.

"Kite flying is not permissive in Islam according to some religious elements," said S.M. Masud, 70, an attorney who argued against the ban. "The government has used all tactics to stop it."

But, he continued, "kite flying is in the blood of the people here. You can't stop it."

The current clash has its roots in Basant — an ancient Hindu festival celebrating spring. Basant is highlighted by thousands of people flying kites from rooftops.

According to historian Tahir Kamran, a Hindu boy named Haquiqat Rai was charged with blaspheming Islam and sentenced to death in the mid-18th century. The Qazi, or Muslim magistrate, offered to spare Rai's life if he converted to Islam. Rai refused and was executed. To honor Rai and protest his killing, Hindus in Lahore flew kites across the city.

"Orthodox Islamists view kite flying as having antecedents in Hinduism and therefore anti-Islamic," said Kamran, who chairs the history department at Government College University in Lahore.

Pencinta layangan melanggar angin religius di Pakistan


Pakistan yg sedang bersusah payah menerapkan reformasi demokratik, kini lagi2 mengalami pertentangan antara kaum moderat dan konservatif yg keduanya menganggap diri lebih Islami.
Sport layangan yg dianggap haram itu ternyata sebuah sport populer.

"Mata pencaharian dan sejarah kami pelan2 terkikis habis," kata Shahid
Malik, seorang penerbang layangan profesional berusia 49 thn.

Thn 2005, mahkamah agung Pakistan melarang layangan diseluruh negeri. 3 alasan mereka :

• Tali layangan yg tajam bisa melukai leher pengendara motor dan sepeda.
• Anak2 luka2 atau tewas karena mengejar layangan yg jatuh.
• Orang yg mengambil layangan jatuh yg tersesat di kabel listrik, sering kena sambungan listrik dan mengakibatkan kerusakan jutaan dolar pada otoritas listrik setempat.

Namun larangan ini tidak disukai secara luas.

"Layangan tidak diijinkan dlm Islam," kata pengacara S.M. Masud. "Pemerintah melakukan semua taktik utk menghentikannya."
Tapi, katanya, "menerbangkan layangan sudah mendarah daging pada rakyat kita. Kita tidak dapat menghentikannya."

Tradisi layangan ini berakar dari tradisi Basant — sebuah upacara hindu yg merayakan datangnya musim panas. Basant ditandai dng ribuan orang menerbangkan layangan mereka dari atap2 rumah mereka.

Menurut sejarawan Tahir Kamran, diabad 18, bocah Hindu bernama Haquiqat Rai yg suka main layangan dituduh menghina Islam dan DIHUKUM MATI. Pihak Qazi, atau magister Muslim, menawarkan utk membatalkan hukuman mati tsb jika Rai masuk islam. Rai menolak dan di-eksekusi. Utk memperingati, menghormati Rai dan memprotes terhdp hukumannya, kaum Hindu di Lahore menerbangkan layangan diseantero kota.

"Islamis Orthodox menganggap penerbangan layangan sbg anteseden Hinduisme dan oleh karena itu dianggap anti-Islam," kata Kamran, dari departemen sejarah di Government College University di Lahore.

Laqman Qazi, anggota Jemaat Islamiyah, mengatakan : "Basant adalah budaya India dan tidak ada hubungan dgn kami, Muslim."

Penerbangan layangan disini adalah sport yg sangat kompetitif yg berakar 3.000 thn di CIna.

Dan walau diancam hukuman 4 TAHUN PENJARA DAN DENDA US$1.500, Aslam dan teman2nya tetap menerbangkan layangan mereka.